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On June 26th, BC Health Minister Adrian Dix joined BC-CfE Director Dr. Julio Montaner to mark very encouraging progress on the uptake of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in BC, since the January 1st launch of the publicly funded program.

An HIV prevention program, available at no cost to people at high risk of HIV, is enrolling over 400 participants – primarily men who have sex with men (MSM) – every month right across BC. PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a daily oral antiretroviral medication that prevents new HIV infection when taken consistently.

When an anonymous donor helped the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) establish a space for marginalized populations in the Downtown Eastside to provide healthcare, the BC-CfE worked with Dr. David Maberley, a highly credentialed ophthalmologist, to include an eye clinic. The Downtown Eastside Eye Clinic (DEEC), located at 623 Powell Street (accessible through the alley of the main building), has since – on an almost daily basis – seen patients who haven’t had their eyes checked in years, if ever.

According to health officials, Panama’s embrace of Treatment as Prevention® (TasP® ) since 2014 has resulted in quicker diagnosis, as well as accelerating the linkage of patients to antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinics. The country’s HIV diagnoses curve has stabilized in recent years and officials expect it will decrease in the coming years.

A revolutionary phylogenetic monitoring program developed at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) demonstrates how HIV is spreading across five provinces in Canada. This first-of-its-kind system identifies HIV transmission outbreaks, or “clusters” (groups of recent, related, HIV infections) in near real-time.

In 1996, BC was the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Canada, with the province diagnosing up to 800 people a year at the height of the crisis. Being in the ‘eye of the storm’ forced the province and researchers to address the disease with an innovative spirit and ground-breaking treatment - setting the standard nationally and around the world.

Dr. Marianne Harris, Clinical Research Advisor with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE), provided an overview of the new BC-CfE PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) guidelines. Dr. Harris emphasized the safety and tolerability of the PEP regimen will be improved with the use of raltegravir and due to improved lab technology, the final HIV test can be done 3 months (instead of 12) after the event.

Diabetes Canada announced it is adapting the made-in-BC Treatment as Prevention® (TasP®) strategy to diabetes to make over 6 million Canadians living with pre-diabetes, and diabetes, aware of their status.